4 Ways Senior Care Nonprofits Show Their Impact With Data

Nonprofits are typically mission-based, but too often struggle to measure how well they are achieving their mission. You’re doing good things, you’re working hard, you’re helping people—but that’s not enough. You can’t know if you’re achieving your mission without a quantifiable measure of impact. Anyone who invests money or time in your nonprofit (donors, foundations, volunteers) wants to know what their time or money has achieved, and just as importantly, your staff needs to know their hard work and long hours are making a difference.

What is your mission? What would have to happen for you to know you’re achieving it? Determine what specific outcomes would indicate you are achieving your mission, and then identify the key indicators to measure those outcomes. Determining key indicators can be tough—but here are some ways partnering with SeniorGrowth makes it easier.

#1 Provide standardized measures

The SeniorGrowth platform includes a standardized measurement of Quality of Life that can be used by senior growth organizations to quantify impact. Our Smart Assessments tool feeds directly into the analysis of six key areas: Mental Wellness, Physical Wellbeing, Eating & Nutrition, Home & Environment, Activity & Purpose, and Family & Friends. These six areas are rolled up into an overall Quality of Life score. This set of scores are a proxy for measuring a person’s social determinants of health.

By collecting consistent data points for all seniors, you can then view data at the individual or aggregate level for particular areas or for Quality of Life as a whole. SeniorGrowth’s data-driven analysis features make it easy to view high-level data and also drill down into the specifics as needed. We provide charts and graphs that can be copied and pasted into any type of presentation or marketing material to communicate your impact to the community—so you can not only make it easy to see what your organization is accomplishing, but also back up your message with data.

#2 Enable benchmarking and comparison

Each person in your care is unique. They have unique personalities and unique health concerns. While you aim for standardized care, it’s important to remember that each senior has different needs.

The SeniorGrowth platform creates personalized recommendations, risk analysis, and Life Plans while maintaining standard measures at the aggregate level. Seniors can be treated based on their individual profile, but the impact of that treatment can be used as input into the bigger picture.

With this type of data, it’s easy to create benchmarks and draw comparisons. You can’t know if you’ve improved if you don’t know where you started. With your key indicators defined, you can create a baseline for each indicator. Then when you assess the impact of changes over time, you’re comparing apples to apples. You’ll know what improved and by how much.

#3 Track performance over time

Once you implement standardized measures, from that point forward you can track performance over time with accuracy and confidence. You can identify trends, which is particularly helpful in risk analysis. You can see how quickly things are moving in any given direction—maybe your Quality of Life indicators for seniors who recently enlisted your care are going up, but not as quickly as you’d like. In that case, you may want to revisit your on-boarding process and look for improvement areas.

SeniorGrowth’s platform includes customizable trend analysis and you can easily view change over time for your key indicators. SeniorGrowth also provides Smart Risk Analysis tools to identify specific steps to prevent risks like hospitalization or injury from falls. Staying on top of risk management means your seniors will stay healthier longer and can age in place right in their own homes.

#4 Connect efforts to outcomes

It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of running a senior care nonprofit—you and your staff work hard and know you’re making a difference, but you also know that you need to quantify your impact for donors, volunteers, and the community. You need to know what your efforts accomplish and how improvements affect your outcomes. In simpler terms, you need a direct line of sight between actions and their impact. With data analytics in place, connecting efforts to outcomes becomes easy. Make a change and track how it impacts performance. It’s that simple.

SeniorGrowth is a technology provider with the specific goal of helping senior care organizations make the most of their data—including the ability to show quantifiable, proven impact with minimal effort. Our mission is to help you achieve yours. We invite you to try our platform with a free 14-day trial and see for yourself how data can help you provide the best possible Quality of Life and independence for seniors in your care.

Do you have something to say about using data to quantify impact? Tweet us @SeniorGrowth with #DataInSeniorCare.­­­

At SeniorGrowth, we are dedicated to improving the Quality of Life for seniors through the power of data. We build solutions to empower senior care organizations with data analytics and insights to prove their impact and make a difference for the seniors they serve.

For a limited time, we are offering a 14-day free trial of our data insights platform. Claim your free trial today: